<TITLE>02. Par 5-8</TITLE>L-5 Just like a flower, I noticed you women here with your flowers, how that they will bloom up in the summertime, then death stops them. They bow they're little heads, give up the life that's in them. The petals drop off, a little black seed drops out, then they have a funeral procession. Did you know that? God has a funeral procession for His flowers. Sure. The fall rains come and cry their tears down, and grows the little black seeds. Then along comes the cold winter, freezes up, and the pulp's gone, bursts out of the seed and runs out. Spring of the year there is there's no bulbs, no pulp, no seeds, no nothing that you can find, and yet, in there God has preserved a life. Just as that eastern sun begins to shine and warm up the ground... There's no science could find that little grain of life, and yet it's there, and it lives again. And if God has made a way for a flower to live again, how much more has He made a way for a man to live again.

L-6 Sometime ago, I was having ice cream with an old Methodist preacher friend of mine. And he used to sing the little song that I was preaching to you about. Now, he was a real Methodist. He wasn't...?... just--just like a lot of Methodists today, just go to church. He was a Methodist; he had an experience.
Like I've often said to the Pentecostal people, you Pentecostal people just got the same Holy Spirit the Baptists got. Now, we're not some kind of Baptists that shake hands and join church. We got down at the altar and beat one another on the back till we come through. We had something when we got through. God knows we need some more Baptists like that, the old fashion type of Baptists, not just the ones believes in grace and brings a lot of disgrace to the Gospel; but one who believes in the grace of God and lives it by the Holy Spirit.

L-7 And I was having ice cream with this old Methodist friend of mine. And the Agriculture Hour was on. And over in Louisville, Kentucky, there was broadcasting and said The little 4-H club had made a machine that could produce a grain of corn just as perfect as one that has growed in the field. Said you could reach your hand in the sack that was a--get the machine produced, put your hand in a sack that was raised from a field, mix them together, there was no way to ever tell them apart. Take them to the laboratory, spit them open, they both have the same amount of calcium, moisture, and the heart was in the grain just the same. And everything just... One made just as good a corn flakes as the other one, and just as good a grits, hominy, anything as the other one. And they said there's only one way you could really tell; that's bury them. I said to this old Methodist, "Now, if you don't want me to embarrass you, better hold my hand."

L-8 You can act like a Christian; you might dress like a Christian; you might impersonate a Christian in every way; but unless that grain of Life is in there, you'll never rise in the resurrection. That machine can put all the moisture and all the calcium in there, but it can't put life in there; that's God's work alone. You might be a Christian, be just as loyal and perfect in your church as you can be, but except you're borned again, in the resurrection you'll lay there. Only Eternal Life, God's Life, will He raise up from the dust of the earth.


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